Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Good-boy ism & Pineapple Aversion

The Spear has an inkling that much in this world gets
achieved because people simply don’t like being shouted at.Forget about ambition and desires; to The
Spear, most people seem to spend vast amounts of their energy every day simply
trying to avoid ‘getting in trouble’ (The Spear included).

If you think about it, in a ‘civilised’ society, the worst
thing that will happen if you stuff things up is that someone will shout at you;
somebody will shove a metaphorical pineapple where the sun don’t shine. That’s it.
Sure, you might get fired as well, but The Spear suspects that for most
people the firing is secondary to the pineappling in causes for dread, and that
most people would prefer to be fired quietly rather than keep their job on the
condition that they have to sit through a lengthy and intense verbal grilling,
possibly on multiple occasions (thus the propensity for those who have screwed
up to fall on their sword and flee a situation prematurely).

The humble - yet spiky - pineapple

There is of course the possibility of other punishments,
such as jail time where criminal matters or negligence are concerned, but for
most of us it is not in the criminal sphere, but in the professional sphere
where the pineapple aversion is most apparent.
The possibility of jail time isn’t what is driving us to do our job
correctly; it’s the possibility of having our professional superiors lambast us
with deserved criticism. Being
rightfully made to feel like an idiot is what The Spear is trying to avoid most
of the time.

Perhaps this pineapple aversion is more applicable to The
Spear’s generation (~Y) than others. Older
generations who were subject to corporal punishment and were continually told
that they were useless while growing up would perhaps have thicker skin. Meanwhile, we Gen-Y pansies are more affected
by emotional reward & punishment (and pineappling), given that we have
largely never had to worry about the real possibility of a fatal beating and have
grown up being told that the sun shines out of our arses. Those who have been handled with kid gloves
find the pineapples that much spikier.

Given how detrimental a good pineappling can be to someone’s
psyche, some people would likely rather corporal punishment to an emotional
bashing. It is in some ways easier to
take a punch or a caning than to be made to believe that you yourself are good
for nothing. You just take the hit and
push through the pain which will heal in time – but at the same time you can still
believe you are in the right. On the
other hand, when you get properly pineappled, you are slowly convinced that you
are inherently wrong as a person, and your big brain is employed against you in
an invisible task of self-flagellation.
In some people this will inspire them to do better next time, but in
others it will inspire hatred of self and the desire to get out of the
situation in one way or another, possibly with tragic consequences.

The Spear wishes that he could stop trying so hard to be
such a ‘good boy’; but the truth is that he cares way too much about what other
people - especially those in positions of authority of him - think, and finds
it desirous for people not to shout at him in anger. He can’t help this good-boy mentality; there
is something in him that just wants to please. While this possibly irrational fear of pineapples
makes him no-doubt a very productive worker, the downside is that he spends
most of his time doing, and more importantly - thinking, what other people want
(he does, however, typically get monetarily compensated for this).

Not caring what other people think can be a blessing for an
individual as it can lead to increased personal freedom (just ask ‘bad boys’), but
a healthy degree of pineapple aversion is nonetheless required to keep the
bad-boys in check if society as a whole is to remain functional. In that respect, ‘good boy-ism’ and pineapple-aversion
may be naturally selected traits, advantageous to living in and benefiting from
a society. Perhaps The Spear and others
are so disinclined to be shouted at because our selfish ancestors that weren’t were
not able to cut it in society and thus died out.

It is up to us all as individuals to decide just how averse
we are to getting pineappled, and just how much of our valuable time and
thought-space we are willing to sacrifice to avoid a spiky situation. Too averse, and we shall live our lives
according to whims of others. Not averse
enough, and we may eventually find ourselves removed from society in one way or
another (poverty, jail, exile). Our
degree of pineapple aversion is the balance between our self interests and
those of everyone else.